Page 77 of The Dragon Warlord

“And my name is Matilda.” She rolls her eyes. “Which way is the dragon?”

“This way.”

We make it two steps, we’re accosted by two yellow-eyed wasteland demons, smaller versions of the one who killed Amira a half-decade ago. These ones don’t have wings.

“Heaaaargh!” I cry and slam my sword up and under its ribcage with the help of a little magic through the blade. The beast explodes into a splatter of green-black blood to add to the filth-caked walls. That would have been handy five years ago.

River does the same to the second beast. “That spell is advantageous, Warlord.”

As I learned about dragon magic, I got an idea from a book and created something new. We spent months with the clan, perfecting it.

It’s a good thing I can sense dragons, or we might have died of starvation once we’d gotten lost forever within this miserable necropolis. The halls narrow. More beasts filter from the many branches of passages and we take them out as we run. Massacring them one-on-one is ideal. These halls limit the number of beasts that can come at us at once.

Finally, the hallway opens. If I couldn’t feel the sheer size of the beast behind the door at the end, I wouldn’t believe that a dragon sat on the other side. How would they have gotten a dragon his size in here? Unless they brought him down here in his shifted form and forced him to shift. That alone would hold him captive, no chains required.

The claustrophobic thought of being trapped in a dungeon forever is terrorizing.You can’t cage a dragon.Now, I’m desperate to get him out of here if there’s anything left of him.

There isn’t a lock on the door. I guess there doesn’t need to be. Nothing his size is fitting through this door.

Inside there’s more of the rotten stench that permeates this place and it opens to taller ceilings, relieving some of the suffocating distress of traversing the cramped catacombs. Discarded bones trail toward the back of a cave-like arch. It’s long hallways of depressing darkness until we dimly light the path with our torches.

Then we see him.

The head is mammoth, making the three of us look like ants by comparison. His blue scales are covered in dirt and muck, but there are small dots of shine where the mud has dried and fallen away. My torchlight glints off the specks of his scales that show through, and he sparkles like diamonds.

Wow. He’s magnificent.

Then a blue eye pops open and I remember that we’re before a large and probably angry dragon. I know I’d be angry if I were kept like this.

“Shite!”

I pounce River and Ikara, knocking them out of the way of a large blast of blue flames. The flames won’t hurt us, but I don’t feel like having my clothes singed off twice on the same day, thank you very much.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, friend. We’re not going to hurt you,” I say.

The dragon whines and it’s then that I notice he can’t move very far. Gods. He’s chained so that his limbs and wings can move, but each limb has a shackle without much length and his wings can only flap so much. It’s still enough to create a gust and that’s good, but will he be able to fly in such a state?

River and Ikara look at me for answers to questions that I also have. Namely, how do we get the dragon out of here?

“Riv, can you manage to blast a hole in this wall without collapsing the fortress on us?”

“If you can give me a minute or two, Warlord. Let me check out the structure a little.”

“Okay. Just don’t … don’t go too far, all right?” This place gives me the heebie-jeebies. I want us out of here.

“Of course, Alpha,” he says, knowing that was a very alpha-y command and not a Warlord one. Yet more ways we’ve had to adapt over the years. He’s my finest warrior. It would be insulting for me not to send him into dangerous territory or have him fighting by my side. It’s hard to explain just how I maneuver that one. Sometimes I can let him do things and sometimes I can’t. We usually fight together anyway and that’s our preference.

“Blech. You two are gross,” Ikara mutters, moving to take a look at the chains that bind him. “Huh. These aren’t special. You could probably hack through them with your sword, Warlord. Why hasn’t he broken through them?”

She places a tentative hand on him, and he flinches then relaxes when he realizes she’s not going to hurt him. “These must be sore,” she says to herself. Then she looks up. “Oh, dear.”

Shining her torch upward, we note the collar around his neck, and I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but our collars are nice compared to this one. His has spikes that sink into his neck.

“Utterly, horrific,” she says. “We’ve got to … Warlord, form the bond.”

“You say that like it’s going to be easy. Form the bond, Warlord. Kill a horde of Wasteland beasts, Warlord,” I mutter. She sounds like the dragon lord. River’s moved too far from my sight and though I can feel him, I can’t see him and my alpha instincts kick in, searching him out. He feels far away. “Riv?” He doesn’t answer and my heart goes wild. “Omega?”

“Here, Warlord,” he says. “I think I’ve found a safe area, should I start blasting?”